Lecture 9: THE PRONOUN AND THE NUMERAL
(Лекция , семинар )
As we have already seen (p. 30), the definition of pronouns as a separate part of speech has caused many difficulties. More than оnce in the history of linguistics the very existence of pronouns as a part of speech has been denied. However, attempts of this kind have not proved successful and in present-day grammars, both English and Russian, pronouns are recognised as a part of speech.
Thus, the pronouns I , you, he, etc., though pointing to things (in the widest sense of the word) and in so far resembling nouns, cannot as a rule be modified by adjectives. (Phrases like poor me appear to be rare.) These pronouns differ from nouns in that they cannot be connected with any article, or modified by a prepositional phrase, etc.
1. The category of case.
In dealing with the category of case in pronouns, we must bear in mind that they need not in this respect be similar to nouns.
Some of them may, and indeed do, have peculiarities which no noun shares.
Some pronouns distinguish between two cases which are best termed nominative and objective (instead of nominative we might also say subjective). These are the following:
Nomin. I he she (it) we (you) they who
Obj. me him her (it) us (you) them whom
No other pronoun, and, indeed, no other word in the language has that kind of case system.
A certain number of pronouns have a different case system, viz. they distinguish between a common and a genitive case, in the same way as the nouns treated above. These are, somebody, anybody, one, another, and a few more.
All other pronouns have no category of case (something, anything, nothing, everything, some, any, no, my, his, etc.; mine, hers, etc.).
The case system in pronouns of the somebody type is identical with that of the nouns of the father type.
It is very well known that the form me, which is an objective case form, is not only used in the function of object (direct or indirect), but also as predicative, in sentences like It is me. The sentence It is I, though still possible, is rarely used: it has acquired a kind of archaic flavour as its stylistic peculiarity and has therefore become inappropriate in colloquial speech. However, in the construction it is... who the form I is usual: "It's I who am tire some" he replied. (FORSTER) As to the other pronouns of this group, the sentences It is him, It is her, It is us, It is them, with the objective case form used as a predicative, do occur, but they seem still to have a somewhat careless or "low colloquial" colouring and they have not superseded the variants It is he, It is she, It is we, It is they. Here is an example: No, I don't suppose it will prove to be them. (FORSTER)
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The form me can occasionally be found in the function of subject, provided it does not immediately precede the predicate verb, as in the sentence: That's the law of the state, Ham, and there's nothing me or you can do about it. (E. CALDWELL) The form me could not have been used here if there had not been the second subject you, in the sentence. This confirms the view that stress plays an important part in determining the use of I or me in such conditions.
With the pronoun who the development is partly similar, and partly different. It is similar in the main point: the case difference between who and whom is quite obviously disappearing. But here it is the original objective case form that is giving way, and it is no longer preserved in any specific syntactic function. Thus, the sentence whom did you see? is being superseded by the variant, who 
did you see?, and, similarly, who tends to take the place of whom in such sentences as, This is the man who(m) you wanted to see.
Examples of this use are found as early as in Shakespeare, for instance Between who? ("Hamlet"), and also occur in the 18th century, for instance in a novel by Jane Austen in a conversation between educated speakers: But who are you looking for? Are your sisters coming? An example from a modern play: Who were you private secretary to? (TAYLOR)
Thus the general tendency is clearly towards the disappearance of the opposition between nominative and objective in pronouns.
2. The category of number.
It ought to be emphasised that what we mean here is the grammatical category of number, and the question is, in what pronouns and to what extent that category is actually found.
It will be easily seen that the category of number has only a very restricted field in pronouns. It is found in the pronouns this/ these, that / those, other / others (if not used before a noun).
As to the pronouns I / we; he, she, it / they, it must be stated that there is no grammatical category of number here. We is not a form of the pronoun I , but a separate word in its own right. In a similar way, they is not a form of he, or she, or it, or of all of them, but a separate word.
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There is no grammatical category of number either in the pronouns my / our; his, her, its / their, and mine / ours; his, hers / theirs. E. g., her and their are different words, not different forms of one word.
A peculiar difficulty arises here with reference to the pronouns myself / (ourself), ourselves; yourself / yourselves; himself, herself, itself / themselves.
If we compare the two pronouns myself and ourselves, we shall see at once that the difference between the first elements of the two words is purely lexical (just as in the corresponding words my and our), whereas the second elements differ from each other by the same suffix -s that is used to form the plural of most nouns. 1 Thus we are brought to the conclusion that ourselves is essentially a different word from myself.
There are no other grammatical categories in the English pronoun: there is no category of gender. The pronouns he, she, it, and also the pronouns his, her, Us; his, hers; himself, herself, itself, are all separate words. Thus, she is not a form of the word he but a separate word in its own right.
THE NUMERAL
With numerals, even more than with pronouns, it is difficult to keep the strictly grammatical approach and not to let oneself be diverted into lexicological considerations. O. Jespersen has quite rightly remarked that numerals have been treated by grammarians in a different way from other parts of speech.
There are no grammatical categories to be discussed in numerals. There is no category of number, nor of case, nor any other morphological category. The numerals are, to all intents and purposes, invariable. So there is only the function of numerals to be considered, and also possibilities of their substantivisation.
The most characteristic function of numerals is of course that of an attribute preceding its noun. However a numeral can also perform other functions in the sentence (it can be subject, predicative, and object) if the context makes it clear what objects are meant, as in: We are seven, Of the seven people 1 was looking for I found only three.
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An ordinal numeral can also be modified by an infinitive denoting the action in which the object mentioned occupies a definite place; a characteristic example of this usage is, He was the first to come.
The numerals, both cardinal and ordinal, share certain peculiarities of syntactic construction with pronouns. Cf., e. g., five chil dren, five of the children, five of them; some children, some of the children, some of them; also the first travellers, the first of the travellers, the first of them. This, however, does not seem a sufficient reason for uniting pronouns and numerals into one part of speech, and such a union has not so far been proposed.
Academician L. Sšerba proposed in his paper on parts of speech in Russian to establish a part of speech called quantitative words (количественные слова), which would include both cardinal numerals and words such as many, several, etc. He has not been followed in this by any other scholar. (See Л. В. Щерба, О частях речи в русском языке. Избранные работы по русскому языку, стр. 73.)
Lecture 10: THE PREPOSITION
(Лекция , семинар )
1. The definition and the general characteristics.
It is common knowledge that prepositions are a most important element of the structure of many languages, particularly those which, like Modern English, have no developed case system in their nominal parts of speech.
According to the Russian linguist Ilyish preposition expressesrelations between extralinguistic phenomena and serves as a link between words.
It is sometimes said that prepositions express the relations between words in a sentence, and this is taken as a definition of the meaning of prepositions. If true, this would imply that they do not denote any relations existing outside the language. However, this is certainly not true, and two or three simple examples will show it. If we compare the two sentences: The book is lying on the table, and The book is lying under the table, and ask ourselves, what do the prepositions express here, it will at once be obvious that they express relations (in space) between the book (the thing itself) and the table (the thing itself). The difference in the situations described in the two sentences is thus an extralinguistic difference expressed by means of language, namely, by prepositions.
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It would certainly be quite wrong to say that the prepositions merely express the relations between the word book and the word table, as the definition quoted above would imply. The same may be said about a number of other sentences. Compare, for instance, the two sentences, He will come before dinner, and He will come after dinner. It is absolutely clear that the prepositions denote relations between phenomena in the extralinguistic world (time relations between "his coming" and "dinner"), not merely relations between the word come and the word dinner.
We must add that there are cases in which a preposition does not express relations between extralinguistic phenomena but merely serves as a link between words. Take, for instance, the sentence This depends on you. Here we cannot say that the preposition on has any meaning of its own. This is also clear from the fact that no other preposition could be used after the verb depend (except the preposition upon, which is to all intents and purposes a stylistic variant of on). Using modern linguistic terminology, we can say that the preposition on is here predicted by the verb depend.
Returning now to our examples The book is lying on the table and The book is lying under the table, we must of course say that neither the preposition on nor the preposition under is predicted by the verb lie. If we put the sentence like this: The book is lying ... the table, the dots might be replaced by a number of prepositions: on, in, under, near, beside, above, etc. The choice of the preposition would of course depend on the actual position of the book in space with reference to the table. Similarly, if we are given the sentence He will come . . . the performance, the dots may be replaced by the prepositions before, during, after, according as things stand.
2. Syntactical functions of prepositions.
Here we must distinguish between two levels of language: that of phrases and that of the sentence and its parts. As far as phrases are concerned, the function of prepositions is to connect words with each other. On this level there are patterns like "noun + preposition + noun", "adjective + preposition + noun", "verb + preposition + noun", etc., which may be exemplified by numerous phrases, such as a letter from my friend, a novel by Galsworthy, fond of children, true to life, listen to music, wait for an answer, etc.
On the sentence level: a preposition is never a part of a sentence by itself; it enters the part of sentence whose main centre is the following noun, or pronoun, or gerund. We ought not to say that prepositions connect parts of a sentence. They do not do that, as they stand within a part of the sentence, not between two parts.
Special attention must be given to groups of words whose meaning and functions in the sentence are the same as those of prepositions. Here belong the groups out of, as to, as for, instead of, in spite of, etc. We cannot term these groups prepositions, since a preposition is a word, not a word group, and it is essential to keep up the distinction between words and word groups; neglect of it would bring about a muddle both in grammar and in lexicology. The current haziness in the treatment of such groups and the vague terms "compound preposition" and the like are not conducive to a clear and consistent grammatical theory. Since much the same can be said about phrases equivalent in meaning and function to conjunctions, we will return to this problem after having considered the conjunctions.
1) We have already noted the cases when it is the preceding word which determines it (or predicts it). In these cases the connection between the two is naturally strong. In the cases where the use of a preposition is not predicted by the preceding word the connection between them is looser, and the connection between the preposition and the following word may prove to be the stronger of the two. This difference more or less corresponds to that between objects and adverbial modifiers expressed by prepositional phrases. Thus, in a sentence like This depends on 
him the preposition is predicted by the verb and the phrase on him is of course an object, whereas in a sentence like The book is lying under the table the preposition is not predicted by the verb and the phrase is an adverbial modifier. However, this criterion does not hold good in all cases.
2) Sometimes the boundary line between a preposition and another part of speech is not quite clear. Thus, with reference to the words like and near there may be doubtful cases from this viewpoint. For instance, there certainly is the adjective near, used in such phrases as the near future. On the other hand, there is the preposition near, found in such sentences as they live near me.
3) A special case must now be considered. In some phrases, which are not part of a sentence, a preposition does not connect two words because there is no word at all before it, and so its ties are оne-sided: they point only forwards, not back.
As characteristic examples we may quote the titles of some poems and novels: "To a Skylark" (SHELLEY) ,"On a Distant Pros pect of Eton College" (GRAY), "Of Human Bondage" (MAUGHAM), "Under the Greenwood Tree" (TH. HARDY). The syntactical function of the prepositions in cases of this type is a peculiar one. The preposition either expresses a relation between the thing expressed by the noun and something not mentioned in the text (as in "To a Skylark"), or it gives the characteristic of the place where something not specified takes place ("Under the Greenwood Tree").
It is evident that in such cases the preposition has only a onesided connection, namely with the noun following it, but we may ask whether it has not also some reference to something not expressed which may be imagined as standing before the preposition.
We shall arrive at a similar conclusion if we compare the actual title of Th. Hardy's novel, "Under the Greenwood Tree", with the possible variant "The Greenwood Tree". The preposition implies that we shall be reading about something happening under the tree, rather than about the tree itself. So it will probably be right to say that something is implied (very vaguely, it must be admitted).
4) Prepositions can sometimes be followed by adverbs, which apparently become partly substantivised when so used. The groups from there, from where, since then, since when are too widely known to require illustrative examples.
5) There is the possibility of inserting, between a preposition and the word or phrase it introduces, another phrase, which can, in its turn, be introduced by a preposition. Here is an example of this kind: The first of these, "The Fatal Revenge", appeared in 1807, and was followed by, among other, "The Milesian Chief" ... (COUSIN) The two prepositions, by and among, stand one after the other, but there is certainly no syntactic connection between them, and probably there is a pause, corresponding to the comma of the written text.
6) It should also be noted that a preposition does not necessarily connect the word which immediately precedes it with the one that follows. Cases are frequent enough in which there is no connection at all between the preposition and the preceding word. For instance, in the sentence, This beauty is a trifle dimmed now by traces of recent illness (O'NEILL) there is no connection between the words now and by.
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